Climate

“A third of humanity, mostly in Africa and South Asia, face the biggest risks from climate change but rich nations in northern Europe will be least exposed, according to a report released on Wednesday. Bangladesh, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are among 30 countries with "extreme" exposure to climate shift, according to a ranking of 193 nations by Maplecroft, a British firm specialising in risk analysis.”

“Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan notched a victory at the BASIC talks in Beijing with China and other countries cutting across groups strongly backing India's demand for centre-staging discussions on equity, IPR and trade in UN climate change negotiations on Tuesday. While noting that the emerging economies, along with other developing countries, had committed more to fight climate change than the rich countries, India's restored stance on climate change also found support from China and Brazil.”

“Ahead of its 17th Conference of Parties in Durban late-November, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has registered for carbon credits the Rs.365-crore Himachal Pradesh Mid-Himalayan Watershed Project being co-funded by the World Bank. This is the first project on public land in India registered for carbon credits. Under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change industrialised nations are mandated to meet targets of reducing greenhouse gas emission responsible for causing global warming which was leading to climate change. If they are unable to bring down emissions, countries or companies operating in these regions, have the option of buying carbon credits from projects which have been awarded these credits by the UN clean development mechanism (CDM).”

(Hill Post, 11/03/11)

Energy

“For those eyeing the energy sector for jobs, solar energy companies could just be their next big destination. To fulfill targets of 20,000 MW of installed capacity under the National Solar Mission, the Indian solar energy industry will need an estimated 1 lakh people by 2022 across domains, profiles and levels. That as the sector invests nearly Rs 4,337 crore by the end of the mission period. The space has been abuzz with activity with around 40 players such as Enam Securities, Emami Group, IDFC entering in the last one year alone. "Solar power projects can be implemented in a very short time of 3-4 months compared to traditional means of power like coal and hydro and they also have a long life of 25 years. Besides, there is an additional advantage of acquiring assets like land at lower rates with help from the government, which means huge returns in the long run.”

“According to reports, one of the biggest costs in a data centre is power cost. Power is needed to fire the servers and storage systems. And since these systems heat up, power is again required to cool the systems with air-conditioning. In the dot-com era, data centres consumed 1 or 2 MW. Now it’s common to find facilities that require 20 MW, and already some of them expect to use ten times as much in the years to come. For countries, data centre power consumption is expected to put an enormous burden on their power grids. Not surprisingly, an enormous amount of innovation, right from the semiconductor level, is today going into finding solutions to reduce power consumption in computing systems. IBM’s India Software Lab in Bangalore has just contributed towards that. It has developed a system to run data centres on solar power, and is making it commercially available, perhaps the first such commercial offering in the world.”

“The Karnataka government’s ambitious plan to generating 200 Mw power from the solar photovoltaic power projects has suffered a setback with the Union ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) rejecting the proposal to grant subsidy for 18 projects from the state. As a result, the state government has been forced to cancel the permission granted to those projects. The state government had allotted 129 Mw of grid-connected solar photovoltaic power plants to various developers covering 21 projects. These projects were allotted under the MNRE Scheme for Demonstration Programmes on grid interactive solar photovoltaic power generation. Under this scheme, MNRE was to provide subsidy of Rs 12 per KwH of power generated. None of the developers have been able to get any approval from the MNRE.”

“With global warming on a rise, the State is changing gears to switch to renewable sources of energy for electricity generation, curbing pollution in the process. The power sector in India is undergoing sea changes of late, with the country already being regarded as the second largest wind power generator globally. However, generation of energy from renewable sources is still in the nascent stages in Orissa, with the power requirement in the State for the year 2011-12 pegged at 24,000 Mega Watt. In a bid to raise awareness on ways of power generation from renewable sources of energy, among industrialists and entrepreneurs, Orissa Renewable Energy Development Agency (OREDA) conducted a workshop on ‘Renewable and Cogeneration Purchase Obligations Regulation’ here on Friday.”

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